The Secret Service thwarted a second assassination attempt on Trump. Then the internet sleuths jumped into action

At around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, the Secret Service fired shots at a man they spotted with a gun several hundred yards away from where former President Donald Trump was playing golf. They quickly apprehended him and, per NewsNation, publicly identified the suspect as Ryan Wesley Routh about three hours later. Then the internet sleuths went to work.
In about 10 minutes, Facebook had removed Routh’s account, but before that happened, several people had already captured screenshots and made videos of posts on social media purported to have been made by Routh, and shortly thereafter were sharing them online, and encouraging others to do the same. Others went granular, sharing information about the accounts that Routh followed.
Not long after, others called a phone number they said belonged to Routh and were sharing the voice recording, which referenced a roofing business in Hawaii Routh is believed to own and his efforts to recruit people to fight in Ukraine and Taiwan. (Routh had been interviewed by The New York Times about his interest in helping in Ukraine, and he is listed as a contact on a website, which was still live on Monday, that recruits people to defend Taiwan.
Others shared what they said was his LinkedIn account.
The internet sleuths were aided by the swift release of Routh’s name by authorities, and also by his propensity to share information online — The Associated Press said he had an “voluminous online footprint” — even including his phone number on his social media accounts.
They were also motivated by the desire to learn as much as possible before the information was locked down. In comparison, there was little information on social media about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who tried to kill Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. Corey Comperatore died at that rally, and two other men besides Trump were wounded. Many Trump supporters have been frustrated by how little we know today about that gunman and his motivations; a bipartisan investigation in the House of Representatives is ongoing and may be expanded to include Sunday’s incident.
Internet sleuthing is a pastime that has grown in popularity, aided in part by the attention given to to the Gabby Petito case and the murder of four students at the University of Idaho. Some instances of internet sleuthing can hinder police investigations and implicate the wrong person, and indeed the rush to share information about Routh has already resulted in the spread of misinformation, with BlackRock and media fact-checkers saying that, contrary to internet reports, Routh was not featured in a BlackRock ad.
Routh, 58, was charged Monday with possessing a firearm as a felon and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Federal officials say he had been in the woods since 2 a.m. before his gun was spotted by a Secret Service agent, who fired on him. The maximum prison term, if convicted of those charges, is 20 years. Per The Baltimore Sun, other charges could be filed later.